


lay aside every weight

by kittu9



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, Community: fma_ladyfest, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, What-If, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:13:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/kittu9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over. Winry is just getting started.</p><p>Written for FMA Ladyfest 2011. What <i>does</i> Winry do after the Promised Day  in the two years before Ed gets around to "proposing"?<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	lay aside every weight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristenell](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kristenell).



> Many thanks to explicate for her careful and conscientious read-through. Any errors that remain are my own.
> 
> Title from Hebrews 12:1 (KJV): "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."

They had all of them been under one roof for over a month now, and Winry could feel herself starting to get impatient. Both boys were still convalescing, as much as they were loath to admit it, and Granny was, with her uncanny precision, sending Winry out on every house call that came in. Winry was grateful for the distraction, if one could attribute so trivial a name to the work, and more grateful still for the personal space her workshop allowed her. Much as she loved Ed, he was incredibly trying, especially in the wake of so large and life-changing a success. For someone so notoriously single-minded, it was difficult to reconcile an old life with an older one, and come out of it a new man. Winry preferred to watch from a close distance, and occupy herself with practical matters, until Ed came to his senses. It was at least an amusing process, if not a particularly efficient one.

She was in her workshop, seeing to those practical matters as the boys mother-henned each other and squabbled over whose turn it was to wash up the breakfast dishes (upon their return Granny had informed the boys that they could at last earn their keep, and Winry had informed them that it was never her turn to wash the breakfast dishes); it was a bright, hot day, edging from summer to fall, and one of the farmhands in the next county had lost his arm in a hay-baling accident. Winry was building the prosthetic herself, nothing elaborate, just simple engineering and tidy construction. The man was young and somewhere on the ladder between struggling and succeeding, financially, and had just married a girl Winry had known as a child. She'd been invited to the wedding but hadn't yet given a gift--the past half-year had been understandably tumultuous--and the prosthetic was as good an upgrade as any, and advertising for the Rockbell shop besides. Winry did excellent, fastidious work, and she wasn't so naïve as to think that a little compassion wouldn't go as far as good materials and routine maintenance tended to. She had just finished pulling a coil of wire through a set of plates, sizing the gage down to something usably delicate, when Granny made her way into the workshop; judging from the muted noise upstairs (though Winry was a poor judge because she rarely bent an ear toward outside sounds) the boys were moving mattresses out of the upper rooms and airing them on the lawn. A job like that would keep them occupied for a long time--they were still weak and full of machismo--and that in itself was a sign that Granny had a few things to say to Winry, and didn't want to bother with nosy Parkers.

Sure enough, Granny was speculative and silent long enough that Winry had an irrational fear of messing up the prosthetic arm's assemblage under the scrutiny; then she huffed, and lit her pipe, and asked Winry when she was going to complete her apprenticeship at Garfiel's.

"You're clever enough to get by with the training you've had," Granny said. "--Don't be modest, Winry, I taught you before you went off to Rush Valley, and I wouldn't have wasted my time on a fool, grandchild or no--but there's nothing like a certification to really impress the general public. I'm getting too old and too fat to really keep up with the farm and the shop, so it's going to be one or the other in a few years, and I want you to have options when you inherit."

Winry, who was privately of the opinion that her grandmother would live forever, spent a moment processing this information before she answered, and another moment considering her words before she spoke them--true enough, she was brash and impulsive, but that came from being young and (somewhat) from wrestling with the Elric brothers for the brunt of her childhood; indeed, Winry Rockbell was no fool, especially not when it came to automail.

"If you think you can manage," she said at last, "I'll pack and leave once I've finished this arm and gotten word from Mr. Garfiel. That should take about a week, I'd think."

Granny nodded sharply. "Sensible. The phone lines in the Valley are notoriously unreliable this time of year, but the paper's reported good weather this past month; you should get through without difficulty." She huffed at her pipe, gnawing the stem a moment, and nodded again. "Well, get to it." She turned and made her way back up the steps and out of the workshop, mumbling to herself about granddaughters and automail surgery and the like; Winry knew the low rumble of chatter was a distraction and reassurance, for her and Granny both--not because either of them dreaded Winry's departure, but because the last time she'd left home had been the first, and awfully dramatic besides. Granny, the Pantheress of Rizembool, wasn't the sort to begrudge another mechanic advanced training, or another woman her own adventures.

Winry turned back to the prosthetic and its many wires, her prior impatience now alchemized into a stunning exhilaration. She felt so bright and full that she wondered if the sensation was anything like swallowing stars, or if it was more like flipping a switch and seeing sparks.

***

That was the thing about the Rockbell place in Rizembool: no one was quite sure if Pinako Rockbell had lived with her son and his wife, or if they had lived with her. After Sara and Urey had died the point had become depressingly moot. Women sent supper in covered dishes and men saw to the heavy work at harvest time, because Pinako was no longer quite so young and her back was not quite so strong as it had been in her wild youth.

Pinako had loved her son and his wife, and now she was getting old and was saddled fully with the farm, her shop, and a child besides--not to mention the Elric brothers. Perhaps the farm wasn't terribly functional--chickens, crops that sustained her family but would never be enough to sell at market, the occasional beehive--but it was still enormous work. She'd started keeping Winry with her in the workshop because there weren't enough hours in the day to mind the child and still have steady light to work by; perhaps when the harvest and canning was finished and school began in town, she'd find a better balance.

It never occurred to her that Winry was too young to play in the workshop, and when it had become clear that her grandchild's small fingers were clever besides, Pinako had been glad to teach her the fiddly, tedious components of automail construction. Work was good for the body and good for the soul, and Winry liked to ask questions. It was almost better than work, knowing and freely giving so many answers.

When Winry told Pinako that she wanted to be like her grandmother when she grew up, Pinako knew the both of them were clinging to something that could not be mended or propped up with a replacement limb.

"No, you'll be yourself," she told her granddaughter, tapping the bowl of her pipe smartly against Winry's head. "But if I have anything to do with your growing up, you'll be a damn fine mechanic."

Winry grasped a wrench, lifting it with an effort that would soon become negligible. Pinako was pleased to see the speculative look in Winry's eye, and the way her granddaughter's hands didn't quite move away from the gutted machine in front of her. She was likewise pleased that a wound within her old heart had begun to heal; perhaps passing on the craft was a bit like graft. Hard work, but worth it.

***

Winry ended up taking the train from Rizembool to Central, and then another train to Rush Valley. As often when traveling, the time crept and lolled, and she was grateful of the few hours she had to wander Central before the second leg of her trip.

Gracia Hughes met her at the station; they went to lunch.

Winry filled the silences at the table with talk of her training ("my last prosthetic was really interesting, I had to rebuild an arm using durable but sustainable materials, and find a way to do it cheaply!"), her attempts at cooking ("I can't do much but scrambled eggs and your pie,"), and news of the Elric brothers ("Al's finally starting to fill out a little, and Ed's dislocated his arm at least three times because he forgets he's not made of automail any more. I'm amazed they survived so long in the wild."). Gracia laughed appropriately and mentioned milestones of her own ("Elysia's reading, of course, and have you heard about Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye?").

Winry was still nervous of every word she'd left unsaid, but Gracia--it was Gracia now--had the tact of an intelligence officer's wife, and she navigated the luncheon table with a reassuring air of one who had had many such encounters before.

Winry felt an odd pang of guilt or perhaps compassion as she listened to less pleasant happenings: Gracia, a widow, was entitled to her husband's pension, but the money never went as far as it ought to and the government in Central was obviously unhinged and tumultuous; as such, the Hughes household made do with very little.

She wanted to offer money, but knew it would be unwelcome. (Being a born and raised mechanic, and having lived far enough outside of town that most of the other Rizembool girls didn't tend to come over, Winry was slow to grasp some of the ways women spoke to each other.) Gracia shared out information and sought a little comfort, and Winry's role was to listen. She appreciated the lesson; there wasn't anyone like Gracia Huges for teaching a girl how to be a lady.

***

Gracia saw Winry back to the station in time for the last train to Rush Valley, and passed along a box of what was probably gingersnaps, and possibly a few clean handkerchiefs (without being told, Gracia knew that Winry had lost at least three handkerchiefs since she'd left Rizembool; Winry hoped she'd one day become as polished as her friend was, but doubted the likelihood). She watched form the platform until the train lumbered itself out of sight; when Winry had left home, no one had seen her to the station, which, considering her family, was just as well. Gracia was a conscientious witness to the last, and her presence reminded Winry of the whole entire life she had waiting for her when she reached her stop.

Winry nearly cut herself in half leaning out the window to wave and holler farewell, but it was worth it to see Gracia become a small, composed shape in the distance. Hauling herself back inside the compartment took longer than she'd planned (Winry was briefly concerned that she'd have to make herself an automail torso, if the window fell on top of her); once back inside, she ignored the looks she got from the other passengers, and spent the rest of the journey going through her old notes from Garfiel, and doodling ideas along the margins.

Winry's entire automail career had been practice; now that Ed's arm was whole and his leg needed so little maintenance, she finally had the time to devote herself to theory, research, and development.

***

At last, the train rolled into town, the dust settled, and Rush Valley revealed itself. Winry rolled her shoulders until her joints cracked before gathering her trunk. She'd forgotten how dry it was in the Valley, and how bright: the sun glanced off a multitude of angles, the planes of every prostheses catching and holding on to scraps of light. She felt briefly aware of her own two good arms, her own two strong legs, but she didn't feel ashamed of having them.

Garfiel met her at the station, resplendent in black lace and a bright pink apron; his face was as elaborately made up as she remembered, and his hands still had traces of grease and contact burns across the palms. He'd brought Paninya with him (she had cut her hair almost as short as it would go without shaving her head, and wore a patterned scarf over it); the changes they exhibited, combined with the brilliant wash of memory, made Winry smile so wide and show so many teeth, her face hurt.

They'd drink tonight, and in the morning, when they were nursing beatific hangovers, she would ask her teacher about her old clients, and if he'd ever given any thought to building an automail heart. 


End file.
